


Moving Targets

by Artemis2050



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis2050/pseuds/Artemis2050
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aftermath of the battle, dealing with the damages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Targets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DevilDoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevilDoll/gifts).



> For the inimitable Devil Doll, who has done the impossible.

**Moving Targets**

It’s still the city that never sleeps.

Scarred, broken, areas in devastation, but still life goes on.

Barton watches.

He’s alone here, as usual at the highest vantage point he can reach, which this time is about as high as it gets. Only the unfinished Freedom Tower, untouched by this most recent round of destruction and about a hundred blocks due south, could put him higher than he is right now, on the platform of the wrecked upper floors of the Stark Tower.

Only not so wrecked now. Money can do a lot, and money plus motivation has transformed these upper floors into works in progress. It’s nothing compared to where he was earlier tonight. 

************************************ 

It was Tony’s girlfriend’s idea, oddly enough, to hold the party in what was left of Grand Central Station. It would never have been believed that so much could be done in such a short time, but Barton had never seen that much money at work. Stark had loved the idea and run with it; an overmatched mayor’s office found itself providing permits and half the city’s police force (overtime paid by Stark Industries) and the party area eventually extended all the way down to Times Square.

Tony had wanted the SI logo to replace the Ball over One Times Square for the night, but Pepper had said that was tacky.

The invitation list included the whole world.

Grand Central had been transformed, somehow, into an amalgam of old-world New York and a Greek ruin. Rubble had been cleared where it was necessary and enhanced where it wasn’t possible. Glittering lights covered the ruins, turning them into fairyland. An army of ironworkers and construction workers had somehow appeared to do the work. Even Tony was bemused by that. “We didn’t even put up a sign,” he’d told Barton. “They just started showing up. One of them told me we were going to need them.”

Miracles had been worked, and this was the result. 

Stark, in his element, had arranged holo projections throughout the building and a takeover of every TV screen in Times Square for his speech opening the party. Standing on the one undamaged staircase at the East end of the building, he’d looked around at the crowd and wisecracked, “Someone told you guys I opened a tab?” The speech was delayed seven minutes for applause after he declared that SI would fund the repairs of the building. 

That was nothing to what happened next. Stark, becoming serious, had said that New York would need everyone to work together to rebuild. “And this will be a start.” As people began filling the stairs and platform behind him, he’d pointed and announced the groups: the construction crew, the electricians, the tile workers, the MTA repair workers, the artists who would restore the ceiling. “All of you! All of you will do this because _that’s what we do!”_

Everyone got t-shirts. Liquor flowed like water and no one got ticketed for public consumption. Stark played bass with Bono and most of U2. The President boogied down.

Happy chaos had reigned.

Barton hadn’t been planning to be there. He’d planned to stay in the hotel room uptown, order room service if anyone had been in the kitchen to make it, and ignore the flashing lights on the phone.

He’d only answered the door because he’d thought it was the steak he’d ordered.

**********************************************

She doesn’t care for champagne.

She does like champagne flutes, though—so graceful, so delicate, so easily transformed into deadly shards of crystal—so she empties the 1990 vintage Krug into a nearby plant and snags a bottle of Stolichnaya from the bar.

The afterparty, unlike the main celebration, is private. ‘Private’ to Tony Stark has a different meaning than it would to most of the world, but although there are probably a couple of hundred people here, the place is more than big enough to hold them. This is lower-key.

Natalia Romanova is still on high alert, because she always is on high alert. She knows almost everyone present, the exceptions being a few lower-level employees of Tony’s easily identified by their rental-quality tuxedos and expressions of almost beatific excitement, like children on Christmas morning, as though they can’t believe their own luck at being there.

 _Everyone is lucky to be here,_ she thinks. _At all._

Tony’s girlfriend is playing chatelaine of the castle in one corner of the room with Fury and Rhodes dancing attendance. She’s in silver, a bright beacon in the room full of black ties and jackets.

“Agent Romanova.” Maria Hill, startlingly feminine in something black and slinky with her hair down, appears at her side. “We need to have a discussion with Tony about hiring practices,” she says dryly. “Look at all these guys.”

Her comment echoes Natasha’s own thoughts and she laughs. She too is in black; a floorlength gown that reveals nothing much in front but is cut almost to the cleft of her buttocks in back. 

Hill is holding a highball glass with an inch of something amber in it; she knocks it back and winces briefly. She turns away from the room and holds out the empty glass. “Can I have a shot of that?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow and brings the filched bottle of Stoli from behind her back. She pours for them both and raises her glass. “ _За ваше здоровье,_ ” she says, and they drink.

Hill reaches for the bottle and pours again. “ _За женщин,_ ” she returns, and Natasha’s estimation of her, already high, goes up a notch. She takes the bottle and pours again.

“To Phil,” she says simply, and holds Maria’s gaze for a long moment. The other woman looks down first before taking her shot, and Natasha has some information she didn’t have before. She looks over Maria’s shoulder at Fury, still engrossed in some no-doubt important strategizing across the room. He looks good in formal wear, but then, most men do.

“Natasha,” Maria says quietly. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”

“Not yet,” she returns sternly, and pours again, although it isn’t her turn. She sets the bottle down on a nearby ledge and holds her glass up. Hill clearly understands what it means, but they drink the last toast silently.

Someone takes over the sound system and puts on something loud and raucous. Natasha can see Pepper’s immediate glance at Tony, who just spreads his hands out in an obvious gesture of innocence. She smiles and sets down her glass.

Maria puts a hand on her arm. “Listen—”

“Another time. I have to find someone.” And she moves: sober, intent, confident, as though she knows exactly where she’s going.

She does.

*******************************************

He knows the second he’s not alone on the roof any more.

“I’m not going down there,” he states aloud, for the record.

She’s closer than he’d realized when she answers. “I didn’t ask you to,” she replies.

He doesn’t take his gaze from the city skyline until she’s standing next to him, and then he spares her a glance. “What do you want, Natalia Alianovna?” The syllables are clipped and although she obviously recognizes the inherent insult in the formal version of her name, she doesn’t react.

“Anything out there?” She isn’t going to answer. Yet.

“Nothing that doesn’t belong there.” He crosses his arms and returns his attention to the streets and buildings below. 

“I was hoping we could talk.”

And that, coming from her, sounding so calm and reasoned and ordinary, sets off something in his chest he can’t even breathe through; his throat feels constricted even though he’s long since discarded the black tie and opened his collar. “I don’t think so,” he grits out.

“You can’t just avoid it. You can’t disappear.” She gestures toward the city. “There’s a lot to be done. They’ll need us.”

He knows that, and he knows she’s playing him somehow, every word calculated to produce a specific response. Because that’s what she does. “Don’t think so,” he returns curtly. “And whatever they promised you for pulling me back in, forget it.”

“You know that’s not true,” she says, and it would be nice if he could believe the note of hurt in her voice, but he doesn’t. He turns and looks at her, knowing she’ll never feel uncomfortable enough to look away.

 _Чёрная вдова._ Black Widow. Deadly. Her hair is up for the occasion, diamonds glitter at her earlobes. Her mouth is deep red. If he could bring himself to meet her gaze he knows he’d believe her. So he doesn’t.

She’s holding her stiletto heels and a tiny jeweled bag in one hand. After a minute she leans against the railing. “Nice view,” she comments.

“Go away, Natalia.”

“No.” 

She means to make him angry, because nothing she does is ever by accident.

***********************************************  
He might have known it would be her. 

She’d been in jeans and a jacket but there were two garment bags over her arm. She’d simply stalked by him, thrown both bags onto the bed and ordered him to shower and get dressed. It was easier to go along than to argue, so he did. If nothing else, he wanted no part of any attempt to persuade him.

He’d been surprised when, after his shower, she was already gone. One garment bag lay open and empty on the floor. The other held a tuxedo from a famous designer that fit him as though it had been made for him.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on the inside pocket of the jacket confirmed that it had been.

She had left a note. “Car will be downstairs. Bring this to show security.” It was on the back of an invitation card.

************************************************

She had always loved Grand Central Station. It was beautiful, but it also reminded her of much older buildings she’d known in other lifetimes. And its purpose was to be a conduit to other places.

Buildings were made by man, but lasted through generations, and somehow some of them could hold echoes of the past. Tonight it had been sad and joyful at once, seeing both its ruin and the beginnings of its resurrection.

She’d approved of the plan to celebrate its rebirth. She’d always known that nothing keeps its same shape or name forever, and raising victory from the ashes is something she understood all too well. Grand Central would find itself again.

She’d known the moment Barton finally arrived. She’d watched him, controlled and military-precise, as he greeted the Mayor and later the President. Two young girls were with the Presidential party and one of them had wanted to meet Barton especially, it seemed. He’d shaken hands with her and when he smiled at something the girl told him, Natasha had looked away.

Then the speeches began.

***********************************************

There’s a certain freedom in not caring what you say, and he indulges in that. _No?_ Just _no?_ “Fuck off.”

“Screw you.” 

“Go to hell.”

“Up yours.”

“Suck my dick,” he snarls, and when her eyes widen and her head tilts a little at that, he thinks he’s won this pathetically juvenile battle. Her nostrils flare as she absorbs that particular vulgarity, and she takes a step away from the railing. He returns his attention to the skies, but she isn’t finished with him.

“Come on.” He turns, despite his better intentions, and she’s gesturing with her head. “Come _on,_ ” she repeats.

And he does feel bad then, even though he knows he shouldn’t bother, because who says that to a girl? And sure, sulking on the rooftop of Tony’s building isn’t going to prove anything, so he follows her as she picks her way in bare feet towards the stairwell that will lead them back toward the party.

But she doesn’t go that way. Holding her dress up in one hand, she winds her way into an area that hasn’t yet received any attention from the renovators, because there’s a bare concrete support pillar and some furniture shoved in anyhow to be out of the elements in case it rains. She drops her shoes and bag onto a leather sofa and sits down on it.

He stops short. 

And she moves as fast as lightning, as fast as a snake, as fast as Natasha Romanova. She has him up against that pillar with an arm against his neck before he can draw a breath, and without a weapon he has no defense against her. She’s always been able to match him blow for blow and then some in a fair fight anyway.

She drops her arm away from his throat and sits down on the incongruous piece of furniture, because god knows she’s never going to be on her knees, no matter what. “Come on,” she says for the third time. Her eyes drop to his crotch. “I don’t have all night.”

He’s instantly as hard as the concrete he’s leaning against, but he’s no more capable of moving to do what she’s suggesting as he is to grow wings and fly. He tries to find words, tries to breathe, tries to find the strength to react at all. But he can’t.

He can’t even less when she heaves an impatient sigh and reaches for the waistband of his tuxedo pants herself. The designer suit didn’t include a cummerbund, and she has his fly open in one quick movement and then her hands are on his hips, shoving his pants and underwear down and out of the way and…

_Christ._

Her mouth closes over him, and he can’t think at all any more. All he can do is scrape his fingernails against the concrete pillar and feel her tongue and lips and teeth working against his cock, feel the heat burning between them, and try and not explode too early, because he wants this to go on and on and on.

“Tasha,” he groans, and manages to move one hand enough to cup her cheek, bury his fingers in her hair. And she takes him deeper into her mouth, the warm wet heat enveloping him, and he throws his head back regardless of the pillar behind him, welcoming the pain, anything that connects him with the world, with the present, with her.

She pulls back, letting him almost slip from her mouth, and they’ve done this before so he knows she’s only waiting for him to thrust forward, take her shoulders, demand more from her. So he does, and she not only takes almost his full length in her mouth, she brings one hand up between his legs to cup his balls, one finger slicking up between his buttocks, and he can’t hold it back any more despite his best efforts. She swallows hard and it feels like the life is being sucked straight out of him, only it feels better than anything he can ever remember, _fuck_ but nothing that happened anywhere in Hungary compares to this, and he knows somewhere in the back of his brain that he’s going to leave bruises on her shoulders with the way he’s gripping her arms but he just…doesn’t….care. 

He’s still shaking as she calmly pulls his clothing back into place and zips his pants for him. Her hair is mussed, now, and her lips, always full and lush, have a bruised look to them.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he tells her, but it’s a dying effort. 

She cocks her head again, looking at him with an attitude of entire innocence despite her ravished appearance. “Why not?”

He doesn’t really have a logical answer for that, except the obvious. “This is Tony’s place,” he offers.

She stands up. His hands are still resting on her shoulders, and with one movement he could push that dress down and leave her naked in front of him, because he’s reasonably sure she isn’t wearing anything under it. Instead he slides his hands down her arms, takes her hands, brings each palm to his mouth to kiss. Then he lets go of those deadly hands and takes her by the waist, drawing her closer, and runs the fingers of his bow hand up her spine until he can cup the back of her head and hold her still while he covers her mouth with his own. Her lips open and it’s like Europe all over again, Budapest and Salzburg and Mallorca and Prague, all of that with a promise of more.

When he raises his head from that kiss, all he sees are her eyes, open wide with dilated pupils, and he wants to believe what he sees in them.

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to do,” she says. 

He strokes her cheek with the back of his hand. “The whole building is under surveillance. We’re probably already on the internet. Or at least on Stark’s computer system,” he tells her.

“Tony and I have an understanding about videotape,” she says wryly. She’s always been quicker to recover than he is. “Now go. I’ll be down in a few minutes.” He stares at her, uncomprehending, and she clarifies. “If we go back in together, people _will_ make assumptions. If that’s not what you want, then go.”

He nods, because that makes sense, and it’s no one’s goddamn business but his own if he would sell his soul for a lottery ticket’s chance that this woman means what she’s implying. “Don’t be long,” he says before he goes.

***********************************************  
She sits in the open, out on an unfinished spar of the wounded building, skirt gathered up and her legs crossed. Her heels are still abandoned in the alcove behind her, but she holds her bag.

She opens it. Tiny and stylish, it holds a lipstick, a phone and a credit card, nothing more. One of the jeweled clasps disguises a ball of explosive that could probably take out the rest of this half-destroyed floor, and the silver framework is a throwing blade, but she only has it with her tonight because it matches her dress.

She repairs her makeup and smooths out her hair, using the mirrored finish of the building to make sure she looks presentable. She puts the lipstick away.

Then she draws her legs up and wraps her arms around them. She rests her forehead on her knees. She stays that way for several minutes. She isn’t watching. She isn’t thinking. She isn’t planning.

She’s sure no one sees when she raises her face to look up at the stars.

_I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. Not anymore._

But when she gets up, Barton is there on the platform, holding her shoes in one hand with the other extended to help her as she steps back onto solid ground.

She lets him close his fingers over her own, and takes that last step.

**Author's Note:**

> За ваше здоровье: Pronounced ‘za vashe zdorovya.’ Formal, ‘To your health.’  
> За женщин: Pronounced ‘za zhen sh’sheen.” ‘To women.’  
> Чёрная вдова: Pronounced ‘chyornaya vdova.’ ‘Black widow.’
> 
> Etiquette of Russian toasts: it’s considered sort of sacriligious to drink vodka without toasting in Russia, and toasts follow an order. The first toast is general, often “to your health” or “to us” or “to our meeting.” There is an old Cossack saying that “between the first and second toasts a bullet should not pass.” The second toast offered by Maria is ironic because it is the equivalent of the traditional American military salute to “sweethearts and wives.” 
> 
> Among soldiers, the third toast is to the dead of war. The fourth is a wish that none present who are drinking the third toast will ever have it drunk for them.
> 
> You can keep drinking after that, but the rules loosen up considerably.


End file.
